Peter Serpico, David Chang's righthand man at Momofuku, is setting up shop in Philly and looking forward to "a little bit of chaos"

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I've lived in New York for nearly seven years, but I've never taken the hour-and-15-minute Amtrak ride to nearby Philadelphia. It's not like I've been avoiding it--it just hasn't happened. But then, on Tuesday, it did, and somehow it makes sense that a New York expat--former Momofuku Ko chef andDavid Chang's righthand man,Peter Serpico--would be the reason for my first trip. This spring,Serpico will open his first post-Momofuku restaurant, Serpico, with Philly's restaurant godfatherStephen Starr.

When I visited, Serpico was cooking at Starr's Il Pittore with that restaurant's chef,Chris Painter, with half the menu comprising dishes that will, in some form or another, end up on Serpico's menu. There was Oxtail consommé with shaved raw daikon "ravioli" (salted till they were malleable, stuffed with caramelized onion cream, and folded shut). I saw ghosts of Serpico's Momofuku past in dehydrated country ham and brussels sprouts. Trout was brined in capers--add a bagel and you'd have the best whitefish sandwich ever.

I wanted to know what Serpico has planned, but he was slammed at dinner, so I spoke with him by phone about his upcoming restaurant, his impressions of the Philadelphia food scene, and what he learned from Chang:

How's it going?Peter Serpico: Well, I just got off a phone call about construction. Just doing the pre-opening stuff. Tuesday was the first time we've produced food for people.

And that's the first time you've been through a full service since you opened the Toronto restaurants for Momofuku last fall?PS: I actually never went to Toronto. I was supposed to go, but it kept getting pushed back, it was just one of those, like, Well, I have to choose between one or the other. That's one of the reasons why I left the company.

You had told me that the dishes that we had aren't exactly what you'll be serving at Serpico. Will we see elements of what you were serving?PS: It's kind of more stylistically what we're going to be doing. I mean, that Oxtail dish I've been writing for a while. The caper-brined fish is another one I've been working on for awhile. So, I would expect basically those dishes with a few tweaks.

How would you describe the food you cook?PS: We've been talking about what we're going label to it here, but I just call it American food. I mean, at the very least, a version of American food. I feel if you more or less sell yourself as an Asian restaurant, people are going walk in--and obviously I'm Korean, I look Asian--people are going expect potstickers and things like that. I don't really want them to expect that.

Is that especially the case in a city, like Philly, that's not quite the ethnic melting pot that New York is?PS: Yeah, exactly. I think when people think Asian restaurant in a place like Philly, they think of something like Buddakan. The last thing we want to do is to disappoint people, and we're not trying to market ourselves as a Buddakan-style restaurant and have them come in and be like, "What is this? This is nothing like Buddakan."

What did you think of the city before you moved there, what was your understanding of the scene?PS: After moving here I realized, yeah, it's 100 miles from New York, but I definitely feel like it's a more family-oriented city. Not that there aren't any single people or a lot of young people here, but I feel that family's a little bit more prominent, which I enjoy. That's part of the reason I moved here as well.

Have you thought about that in the planning process for Serpico?PS: I don't want to say you have to compromise, but that's got to be on your mind. You can't just be like, "We're just gonna do whatever we want, and if people don't like it they can f**k off."

How's the chef community in Philly?PS: A lot of people think that just because you're a chef, this guy's a chef, you're automatically going be attracted to each other in a weird way. But I'm a little more of a private person, and I'm not really about the scene.

I just happen to cook, and the scene just happened to start being like this, but I totally see myself as, like, an electrician. One of my really good friends is an electrician, and after work he doesn't hang out with other electricians and talk about wires and things.

In Philly, there are those huge, big-box restaurants. But you're going to be around 50 seats, right?PS: We're looking at 59 right now. I want to keep it small for our concept. The way I see it going, I'd like it to be sort of a neighborhood restaurant. With a smaller restaurant, you can know your customers a little better. I think that's really important. You can make people feel welcome, carry their things, care about whether they had a good time or not. I don't want the maitre'd to have this $3,000 suit on.

Serpico will have an à la carte menu when it opens. Did you ever consider going the tasting menu route?PS: I would eventually like to do tasting menus, but opening up, we're just going to do straight à la carte. One thing that I want people to say about our restaurant is that it's a great value. I feel a tasting menu doesn't really help with that.

What can you tell me about how the menu is shaping up?PS: It's going to be a little generic with small, medium, and large plates. Large would be more like your entrée. They have nothing to do with price point. We're going to do a charred mackerel and that going to be a smaller plate just because you don't want to eat six ounces of mackerel.

You essentially built your career at Momofuku Ko with David Chang. Is there one thing you took away--either to do or to avoid--from that experience?PS: I think the beauty of Momofuku is that it's a free-thinking company which is really great for a younger generation. I know when I started there I was 24, I didn't want to listen to anyone, I thought I knew it all. Because of that I made a ridiculous amount of mistakes. But we all did, we were all punk-asses, and we made a lot of mistakes, but we all learned from them. I don't know if a lot of other companies allow you to make those mistakes.

How will that mentality play out at Serpico?PS: I want to build a collaborative kitchen. It's not a "do whatever you want" situation, but I want people's opinions on things. That doesn't mean I'm always going to listen to them, but I want to hear them, because that's very important for the growth of a cook, for a manager, or just for the restaurant in general. A little bit of chaos, you know--more like free thinking. We break down our dishes a lot and try to put them back together. We're not really ever happy with anything.